Front cover image for The Historical Muhammad

The Historical Muhammad

In his quest for the historical Muhammad, Zeitlin's chief aim is to catch glimpses of the birth of Islam and the role played by its extraordinary founder. Islam, as its Prophet came to conceive it, was a strict and absolute monotheism. How Muhammad had arrived at this view is not a problem for Muslims, who believe that the Prophet received a revelation from Allah or God, mediated by the Angel Gabriel. For scholars, however, interested in placing Muhammad in the historical context of the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula, the source of the Prophets inspiration is a significant question. It is
eBook, English, 2014
Wiley, Hoboken, 2014
1 online resource (192 pages)
9780745654881, 0745654886
1044729020
COPYRIGHT; Contents; Preface; Introduction and Overview of the Life of Muhammad; Donner's Reply to the Skeptics; Enter Muhammad: An Overview; The Battle of the Trench; 1 Ibn Khaldun's Social and Economic Theory; Bedouins and Sedentary Peoples; Asabiyah; 2 Pre-Islamic Arabia; The Hijaz on the Eve of the Rise of Islam; Pre-Islamic Religion; 3 The Role of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael; Who was the Sacrificial Son?; The Islamic Theory that Abraham, Ishmael, and Hagar Traveled to the Valley of Mecca; Abraham, Ishmael, and the Kaaba; William Muir on the Abrahamic Question. Muir on the Founding of Mecca and the Abrahamic Legend4 Recent and Current Scholarship; The Religion of Mecca; The Kaaba and its Devotees; Hanifiya and the Religion of Abraham; More on Pre-Islamic Religion in the Arabian Peninsula; 5 Possible Influences on Muhammad's Inspiration; Jewish Historians on the Jews of Arabia; Baron on Pre-Islamic, Arab-Jewish Relations in Arabia; 6 The Jews of Arabia: A Recent Re-Examination; 7 Richard Bell's Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment; 8 W. Montgomery Watt's Muhammad; Watt's Muhammad at Mecca. The Daughters of Allah or the So-Called Satanic VersesMore on the "Daughters of Allah" Affair; A Sociological Argument; Watt's Muhammad at Medina; 9 Muhammad at Medina: William Muir's Analysis; Muhammad and the Jewish Tribes of Medina; The Battle of Badr; Current Research on the Massacre of the B. Qurayza; The Conquest of Khaybar; 10 Muhammad and the Jews; Muhammad and the Jews: G.D. Newby's Re-Examination of the Evidence; 11 Concluding Sociological Reflections; Abu Bakr and the Ridda; Notes; Bibliography; Index